Chapter Four

 

With cannibals behind us and slavers in front of us, we did the only thing we could that would ensure our survival. We rested.

Vaughan gave us the order of the watch and instructed us to wake the next person when we absolutely couldn’t stay awake anymore.

After hours of wandering through the dark and a nighttime of escaping cannibals, we all turned out to be a little bit sleepy. Not even the fear of what we had left to face could conjure up enough adrenaline to keep my eyes open.

Our watch shifts were done in pairs and quickly. We went through three cycles until our bodies finally felt rested enough to handle a couple hours at a time.

We stayed in the shade as much as we could and ignored the other dangers to our health and survival. Sleep came first, even my body could agree to that.

When I awoke the third time, my wrists throbbed where the leather bonds cut them. I looked down, only to flinch in disgust. They were badly cut and bloodied. The flesh at the base of my hands had swelled and bloated beneath the crimson streaks. I pulled off the leather strap, still attached to my left wrist, and chucked it into the copper mine.

Infection, I thought. I was definitely going to get an infection. The back of my head still throbbed and my ribs ached. My muscles felt stretched and brittle, like dried out rubber bands. I needed a bath.

And I was so hungry I had stopped feeling hungry. Instead, a permanent nausea took up residence in my stomach and refused to let me think about anything else.

I had the most ridiculous thought of wanting to go home.

But where was home? And even if I got all the way back there, I knew there would be nothing left for me. There was no such thing as comfort anymore. I wouldn’t be able to lock myself in my bedroom and dive under my covers.

This was my life. This, for better or worse, was home.

After every one had gotten up and proved that they could still move around, Vaughan decided we should leave.

“We can’t go backward,” he declared.

Was that a metaphor for my life?

We climbed out of the copper mine. It took some time since there was no straight way up. We exited beneath the shadow of the watchtower. A paved parking lot stretched out beneath us and a highway snaked through the Mexican wilderness.

“Can you help us stay away from towns?” Vaughan asked Adela.

Her face scrunched as she prepared to deliver bad news, “I think that would be worse.”

“I don’t trust you,” Vaughan told her casually. We all knew that he didn’t, but apparently that was a surprise to her. Her pretty face blanched and she waited for his edict, for what that meant for her life. “Give me a reason to trust you. Keep us safe.”

Some understanding returned color to her complexion, but determination finished the job. “Okay,” she agreed quickly. “I will show you the safest way.”

We made our way across the parking lot and to the side of the highway. Adela chatted with Vaughan at the front of the line while we all watched her carefully.

Page’s arm slipped through mine and she admitted, “I like her.”

“Adela?” I whispered, smiling down at her. When she nodded, I admitted, “Me, too.”

“But you don’t trust her either?” Page pressed.

“No, I can’t. And you shouldn’t either. Not until we know more about her.”

Page nodded slowly. “Okay,” she said.

“Just stay close to your brothers and Haley, Tyler and me.” I slid my arm around her shoulders and squeezed her to my side. “You’ll be safe that way.”

She blinked up at me, squinting against the sun, “What about Miller?”

I tucked my chin down and looked over at him. He had more energy than most of us, but I chalked that up to his age. He walked at the edge of our group, constantly looking over his shoulder or over at Page and me or at his sister. No one place could hold his attention for very long.

“Just your brothers for now.”

“Why not-”

“Page,” I whispered more sternly. “Give Miller a little bit of space for now. Please.”

She swallowed thickly, “Fine.”

“Thank you.” I knew it took a lot for her to listen to me and even more to obey. She and Miller had a special bond and I knew she was part of the reason he was still able to keep it together. But after the things he had said in the tunnel… after confessing some of his secret truths… I just couldn’t let her be alone with him right now. He had some more healing to do.

My heart jumped in my chest, but I forced my mind to finish the thought. Miller wasn’t safe. His confession had left me cold and feeling unsafe. He was only a child right now, but he would grow into something more.

He could become a man like the Parkers, who had taken over raising him.

Or he could become confused like Kane.

Or he could become his father.

As much as I loved Kane, only one of those options was acceptable to me.

I decided to hold off on sharing anything with Hendrix or Vaughan though. I could be overreacting. I had certainly been murderous enough by the time we stumbled out of there. It had been in the middle of a very terrifying moment. Maybe they were just words or immature fears that he had been trying to grapple with.

I held Page closer to my side. I wouldn’t share my concern just yet, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t do everything I could to protect Page, to protect all of us.

Adela had started to explain some of her territory. It was run by a man named Raphael. Her people wore green armbands, the same as the Zombies that had chased us into the mine. Hers was one of the bigger territories, stretched out over multiple towns. Communication was awful between villages, but Raphael still managed to keep their allegiance.

Most of that was due to his Zombie army. As we had seen, the Feeders down this way were more advanced. Adela shared that they had been taught to track. They could recognize their enemy by colors and their prey by sight.

“How?” Vaughan demanded. “How do they control them?”

“They feed them,” Adela had said. “They feed them humans.”

I thought back to the Feeders we had known, how they constantly hunted, constantly searched for their next meal. I pictured the starved Zombies in the halls of that school. Matthias had caged them like Diego, and probably like Raphael, but he had not fed them. He had not worked for their allegiance.

“And the slaves?” Hendrix asked her.

“Slaves are bought and sold in my home village. There is an auction every week. Wealthy men come to bid. There are not free men any more. Only slaves and slave owners.”

“How is wealth determined?” I asked, but I was pretty sure I already knew.

“By the number of slaves you own or your resources. A water source on your land is a sought-after asset or maybe livestock or the number of Dead that you keep. Raphael is the… general. There are six other land owners in his territory. Each of them has Dead to fight for them. Each of them has numerous slaves.”

“Where do they find the people to feed their Dead?” Vaughan asked, using Adela’s terminology.

“The slaves,” she explained.

“Raphael is more powerful than Diego?” I asked, anxious to put that particular monster far behind me.

She shook her head quickly, “No. No, not more powerful. Raphael has only six men that he can use. Diego has… what is the word… armies, armies of men. And he also has Dead. Raphael has many dead, but only six men. The rest of his territory consists of slaves.”

“How can he buy and trade slaves with only six men?” King asked. I hadn’t thought of that question, but now I was curious.

“All territory leaders come to trade,” she told us. “There is always peace at the auction.” When she said “peace” her hand flattened in front of her and tipped side to side as if indicating that peace was a relative term in that context.

I could only imagine.

“How are you not a slave?” Harrison asked with demanding skepticism in his harsh voice.

She turned to look at him, meeting his eyes with a lifted chin and squared shoulders. “I was a slave. Until two days ago.”

I swallowed around a sudden lump in my throat. Oh.

She whirled back around and focused on picking her way over the uneven terrain. We were following the road, but staying away from it.

“Diego bought me directly from Raphael,” she told us. “I cost him much.”

King barked out a laugh. “Who do you think we can take from Raphael?”

“What are you talking about?” Vaughan demanded, impatient with his brother’s morbid sense of humor.

King glanced at all of us. “We took Matthias’s kids and Diego’s prized slave. If we really want to keep up our record of pissing off every evil dictator between here and Canada, we’re going to need to steal something very valuable of his and make sure he knows it was us.”

“Shit,” Vaughan groaned, running a hand over his face.

We looked at Adela with a new light now. We could understand her plight, her desperation to get free from something as evil as Diego. I didn’t know Raphael, but I imagined he was as bad as all of the others.

Especially if he fed humans to Zombies.

“Adela, do you know anything about further south?” I asked while holding my breath. “Is everything as bad as here?”

She glanced over her shoulder at me. “Southern Mexico? Or Guatemala? Donde?”

“Farther. Peru? Or Colombia?”

She shook her head, “I do not know. I have not seen anyone from those regions in many years.”

I thought I would feel deflated after that, but my hope stayed the same. She hadn’t offered good news, but she hadn’t given me bad news either. Besides, it was yet to be seen if we would live through Mexico.

“Look,” she exclaimed all of a sudden. She ran over to a group of cacti and grinned at us. “Look at these!”

We did. They didn’t stand out as special to any of us.

“What are they?” Harrison asked blankly.

“Dinner,” she grinned. “This is dinner.”

My stomach growled as if on cue. “You can eat that?”

“Well, not exactly like this. But if we…” she trailed off and searched the landscape.

I took the moment to check out why these prickly plants were any different than the others we’d been passing for miles. They were shorter than the ones we walked by yesterday and their heads were rounded, almost flat. If the cacti yesterday were the supermodels of the desert, these were their short, funny fat friends. These were the ones with personalities.

“We need a…” Adela made a sawing motion with her hands. “We need to cut the tops off.”

We patted our pockets as if expecting to find the knives that we had kept close until recently. Then we too searched the ground as if something might pop up from the ground.

“We cannot grab them,” Adela went on. “They will hurt us.”

Obviously. “What about a stick or something? How soft are they?”

Adela narrowed her eyes, “No… maybe?”

“We don’t have a choice,” Vaughan sighed. “How can you turn this into food?”

“We…” Adela was very fluent in English, but she did not have all of the words. That much was clear when she started pretending to punch at a cactus. “We do this to the middle. It is like agua for us and also food.”

I tilted my head and looked at the cacti in a new light. Was there meat on the inside? We could apparently mash it up to hydrate and feed us? That was worth exploring.

We stayed there until twilight, working on getting the top of the cacti without seriously injuring ourselves.

The first part of the day was spent looking for tools that had potential. We tried a long piece of wood, but it wasn’t nearly strong enough to saw through the thick cactus. Next, we tried throwing things at the group of them.

That also didn’t work. Finally, Miller came back with a large, round, flat rock. The edges weren’t very sharp, but it was big enough that we could hack away at the plants without stabbing our hands with the prickles.

Hendrix and Vaughan spent some time trying to sharpen one side of the flat rock. Then we took turns chopping at the cacti.

We were surprised when it actually worked.

By the second cactus, we learned to chop off the prickles first, at least on the top part, and then remove the part we planned to eat. This made it easy to handle after it had been removed.

We found other rocks to mash the middle and attempted to polish them on the insides of our shirts before we touched them to our food. Eventually we resigned ourselves to the fact that this cactus was going to taste a bit like dirt.

While the boys finished chopping the rest of the cacti, Tyler, Adela and I got to work on pounding the middle to a pulp. It was very physical work and not as easy as I expected it to be. My arms ached and my core muscles felt like I’d pushed them through a serious Pilates workout. Sweat dripped down the back of my neck and dotted my forehead.

The only thing that kept me motivated was the promise that I could eat something if I kept at it.

By the time we sat down in a circle to share our makeshift bowls of cactus soup, all of us were more exhausted than ever.

We sat there silently, waiting for more instruction. Should we just dig in? Could someone pass the salt?

Vaughan grinned at us, “Dinner is served.”

I leaned toward Page, my cactus sharing buddy, and nudged her with my elbow, “You first.”

“Nuh-uh.”

I dove in to set a good example and eventually convinced Page to join me. I didn’t think about the taste too much. I didn’t need to. Once the first bite of something nourishing hit my stomach, I couldn’t eat it fast enough. It was by far, one of the best things I had ever eaten, simply because I knew I wouldn’t die of starvation today.

Tomorrow was a different story, but hopefully our path was paved with edible cacti.

The mood in our group relaxed some. We had survived cannibals, which was a new feat for our little group. And we had survived another day. We even shared a meal together. My throat felt less likely to burst into flames and my head had cleared some. The headache had dissipated with food and hydration and time lapsing from when I had the back of it bashed in.

“Today’s game ball goes to Adela,” Nelson declared. “Thanks for feeding us.”

She quirked a dark eyebrow, “Game ball?”

“MVP,” Harrison said less than helpfully. “You’re the hero.”

She ducked her head shyly, “Not the hero. We are equal. You saved my life. Now I save yours.”

Harrison stared at her for a while, seeming to consider her words. His bitterness towards her shifted into something different, something less hostile. I took a breath I hadn’t known I’d been holding and let myself relax just a bit more.

I really did like her. I was working on the whole trust thing. But this helped.

I sat there enjoying my cactus and admiring the wilderness in the setting sun. The low light painted the harsh earth red and endless. A few stars came out to twinkle, blinking at us in the darkening blue.

We decided to sleep on a set of rocks. We could keep watch and huddle together and hopefully survive the night. The temperature had already dropped significantly. Without the heat of the desert sun to bake us, the nighttime temperatures could be deadly. Without a fire or cover, we would need each other’s body heat to make it until morning.

One rock in the middle jutted out like a runway and I snuggled between Tyler and Page to keep warm. We flipped over on our backs and stared up at the star-filled sky.

Hendrix and Harrison had been put in charge of the first watch. They had armed themselves with an arsenal of rocks. We had nothing else. It would be enough to keep animals away.

Tyler and I told Page stories from before the infection. We told her about going to movies and going out for ice cream. She listened as her eyes started to droop and her breathing evened out. Tyler eventually fell asleep too. She curled into my warmth and snored softly.

I turned away from her, not exactly keen on her snoring in my ear all night. I tucked my arm under my head and got as comfortable as I could be on the dirt ground, out in the open, during the Zombie Apocalypse.

I didn’t fall asleep right away though. Hendrix had perched on a rock just a few feet from me. He tossed a rock in his hand, throwing it high and catching it low. Harrison sat at the other end of our rock peninsula whistling softly.

I watched Hendrix for a long time. In the light of the moon I could just make out the curve of his jaw and angle of his strong nose. I stared at the shape of his shoulders, silhouetted against an endless sky. I studied him and allowed myself to miss him, to regret letting him go.

Just like all of the other times when I allowed myself to truly feel the aching loss of Hendrix, thoughts of Kane filtered in with the intense sorrow. I missed Kane. I hated that he had left me the way that he had. And I couldn’t stand never seeing him again.

But another part of me, another secret part of me, knew that if Kane hadn’t died, I would never have been able to repair my relationship with Hendrix as much as I had. Slowly I felt my heart shift back into place, my soul repair the fractures that had split it so completely. With each day that passed, I felt myself relax around Hendrix and remember the girl I used to be, before all the chaos the Allen family brought into my life.

I would never be able to go back to the beginning and I would forever be changed from the events that happened last fall. But I didn’t think that was a bad thing.

I had matured since then. I had opened my eyes completely to the world around me. And I had realized acutely what I could have lost forever.

I still cared for Hendrix. I could admit that. I cared for him deeply.

And I couldn’t imagine losing him too.

“Willow,” he murmured in a low voice. “You’re giving me a complex. Do I have cactus stuck between my teeth?”

His deep rumble of a voice made me jump in place and then laugh. “Yes,” I told him. “A great big piece of it, right between your two front teeth.”

He tried very hard not to move. I watched his shoulders tense and his fists still at his sides, but eventually he gave in. He just couldn’t help himself.

Picking at his teeth, he said, “That’s not nice.”

“But it’s very funny.”

He swiveled toward me and dropped his hand again. “You’ve been staring at me for an hour. What’s up?”

My face flamed in the darkness, embarrassed that he had been so aware of me and hadn’t said anything until now. I wanted to flip over and pretend to fall instantly asleep.

“I wasn’t just staring at you.” My voice shook nervously. I tried to swallow my anxiety.

He gave me a look that I could interpret through the dark, “What’s on your mind?”

“Cannibals,” I told him immediately. “Cannibals are on my mind.”

He made a sound in the back of his throat and ran a hand through his tangled hair. “Reagan, I’m sorry, okay?”

“You’re sorry?”

“Yes, I’m sorry. I didn’t know if you even heard me back there, but I hadn’t meant to come off like a… a dictator.”

“A dictator.”

“It was bad enough that I had to face the reality that Vaughan was going to lay down like a buffet, but then you… I just… I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t watch them carry you out of that room, knowing what they planned to do to you. It is not in me to not put up a fight for you.”

I tried to swallow again, but truly struggled. “I wasn’t thinking about that,” I whispered stupidly.

Luckily, I didn’t think he heard me. “You saved us, I think. I should have said this earlier, whenever Vaughan brought up game balls. But I think it was really you that saved us back there.”

“How do you figure that?” My mind spun as I tried to reconcile his words from earlier so I pushed the conversation not for compliments, but to stall for time.

“Your determination. I have never seen anyone struggle like that. I thought you were going to cut your hand clean off in order to get those ties off.”

I chuckled lightly, “I thought the same thing at one point. I kept having these nightmares of the leather going straight through my bone, just popping my hand right off.”

He smiled at me, his teeth glinting in the moonlight. “I had been fighting them too, trying my damnedest to get my wrists free, when all of a sudden yours popped apart. I’m not sure I had ever felt such sudden, sharp relief before. You gave me the strength to rip mine apart. I had nearly given up.”

Something tugged at my heart and heard myself whisper, “You can’t give up, Hendrix. Never. Not ever. You can’t ever give up.”

He leaned forward until his elbows rested on his kneecaps. “Will you keep reminding me of that? It’s alarmingly easy to forget.”

“As long as I’m with you.”

“Then always stay with me.”

My breath hitched and my fingers tingled. “Hendrix…”

“Reagan, come here.” He shook his head and added, “It will be easier to talk if you’re over here.”

“You want to keep talking?”

“I have something I want to say.”

I had no idea what that meant. Part of me was too afraid to find out. The other part of me didn’t hesitate to get my ass in gear. I stood up and carefully stepped over bodies to reach him.

He patted the ledge he sat on and I hopped up on it, anxious to hear what he had to say. He looked at me slyly and then bumped his shoulder into mine.

“Hey,” he said softly.

I bumped him back, “Hey.”

“I should probably let you go to sleep.”

I looked up into his eyes and lost myself to the vastness of his gaze. “I’d rather talk to you.”

His lips parted and then he smiled at me. His expression settled into the man I knew before Kane came between us. He wasn’t a relaxed and easygoing kind of person, but he was more like himself than I had seen in the past several months.

We looked at each other for a long time, neither of us knowing where to start or what to say. I didn’t feel uncomfortable, but I was anxious to hear what he had pulled me over here for.

“Did you want to talk to me about something specific?” I asked gently. “Or just talk to me because you’re bored.”

His eyes twinkled with amusement. “A little of both?” Butterflies took flight in my stomach, flapping with a vengeance of pent up longing. “Earlier you blamed yourself for taking us from our home. I just wanted you to know that you’re wrong. We hadn’t planned to stay there much longer anyway. That was only a temporary place for us. And Zombies would have found us regardless of your arrival because that’s what happens during a Zombie Apocalypse. There’s no way to stay safe. You should know that better than anyone.”

I swallowed back an argument, deciding that maybe he was right. He nudged me with his shoulder and kept going, “And you haven’t ruined our lives. Not in any way. If anything you have added to them tremendously. You’ve giving us something to care for and protect. You’ve given my brother Haley and their baby. You’ve given Page sisters and a woman’s influence. You’ve given me the opportunity to love outside of my family and find a bigger purpose in life. You haven’t ruined anything. We would all fight for you… die for you. Reagan, I would follow you to the gates of hell just as quickly as I followed you here.”

“Hendrix.” His name was a prayer on my lips.

“Reagan, I still-”

A wretched screeching pierced through the still night and I decided it would probably be best if I set the entire country of Mexico on fire.

Are you kidding me?

Hendrix’s hand fell to my knee and gripped me tightly. “Feeder.”

“More than one,” I declared as more shrieks echoed through the night.

“Wake up,” Hendrix ordered his family. “Now!”

Vaughan stirred first. He jumped to his feet and catapulted into action. I wondered if he had ever really been asleep to begin with.

I slid down the rock and landed on my feet, anxious to get moving. I jumped over bodies and ended in a crouch next to Page. I shook her gently but forcefully, encouraging her to get moving quickly.

We took off running into the night, desperate to get away from the howling Feeders.

There had been no camp to pick up or possessions to worry about. For once, I could appreciate our free hands and backs.

I had no idea what direction we took off in. I couldn’t have told you where the road was or if we were headed north, south, east or west.

I couldn’t see the ground well enough to avoid holes or lumpy grass. I tripped and stumbled my way into keeping up with the bulk of the group. I had one objective and one objective only and that was to get away from the Zombies.

It turned out that I should have been a little more open minded.

It wasn’t the Zombies I needed to outrun, but the humans.

A Jeep tore over the next hill before I had time to register the purring engine. Spotlights had been tied to the crossbars and shone directly on us. We all skidded to a halt with angry arms raised in front of our faces to block the blinding light.

Vaughan spun around first and shouted orders to head for the rockier areas where the Jeep couldn’t follow. Just as soon as we’d turned another Jeep popped up in front of us, blinding us for a second time.

A scream of frustration ripped through me.

By the time the third Jeep appeared with an equally dazzling light strapped to the roof, I was somewhere beyond enraged and just before so angry I would pass out.

A man swung up to stand on the step outside of the open driver’s side door and with an obnoxiously loud megaphone shouted at us in rapid Spanish.

We didn’t move and Adela didn’t attempt to translate. After a few seconds without response, the man yelled again in the same foreign language and I caught not one single word of what he said.

He started shouting the same word over and over again and still not one of us, save for a petrified looking Adela, could interpret it. It didn’t help that the megaphone muffled his consonants and left his words fuzzy and ringing through my panic.

The man, impatient and tired of our lack of obedience, lifted a huge-barreled handgun into the night sky and fired. This prompted a scream from Adela and Tyler. He yelled at us again through the megaphone.

Finally, Vaughan spoke up and told him the truth, “No hablo Español! We don’t understand Spanish!”

The men around us quieted. I could feel them absorb this new information and silently decide what to do with it.

“Understand this,” the man grinned at us, a sudden giddy mood turning his mouth up into a sadistic smile, “get in the vehicles before I shoot every last one of you and feed you to my Dead!”

We moved into action. They didn’t tell us who should go where, so we split up into our normal pairs and moved in three different directions.

We were oddly compliant, more so than we had ever been. I hated being separated like this, but we went without complaint.

And as Adela stuck close to my side and whispered, “Raphael. Slavers,” I knew it was because we had all been expecting this.

Since we walked out of the copper mine, this had been the trajectory the cannibals set us on. Our lives had started to resemble patterns. As unpredictable as this world could be, our mutual existence seemed to head in one repetitive direction.

If there was trouble to run into, we would eventually find it.

I squished in the back of the Jeep with Hendrix on one side of me and Adela on the other. Harrison had followed us, always the third wheel to Hendrix and my pair. King stayed with Haley and Nelson. Miller and Page stuck close to Tyler and Vaughan.

Guns were pointed and trained on our heads as the Jeeps bounced and sped through the wilderness until they found the road again.

The Feeders howled in the night, their guttural moaning chasing us down the open highway.

Hendrix’s hand reached out to squeeze mine. They hadn’t checked us for weapons, but we hadn’t tried to fight them either. If we had been carrying guns, we would have fired them already.

A beautiful Spanish-style estate came into view after at least an hour of riding. My eyes widened as I took in a working fountain in the middle of a circular drive and lights on in the warm, sprawling main house. I could see two children running through the main room and a woman setting food on the table, both providing the picture of domestic bliss in such a trying time. My heart surged with unexpected hope.

But it crashed immediately when Adela squeezed closer to me, and whispered, “Welcome to infierno. We’ll be lucky to live through the night.”

Since we were lucky to live through the night last night, I could only imagine what this newest version of hell had in store for us.

Just as long as they didn’t try to eat us.